EDITORIAL: A CRISIS YEARS IN THE MAKING

Does Georgia have a higher percentage of criminals in its population
than any other state? Let's hope not. Let's even be optimistic and
insist on believing not.

What it does have, according to a study by the Pew Center on the
States, is the highest incarceration rate in the country. Whether that
means Georgia has more crooks and thugs per capita than any other
state, or just that we're habitually inclined to jail more of them,
it's a dreary statistic.

It's also an incredibly expensive one. Gov. Nathan Deal pointed out
recently that the state pays $3,800 a year for each child in public
school, and $18,000 a year for each inmate behind bars. If there's no
exact mathematical illustration of the "pay now or pay later"
principle, numbers like those come pretty close.

The problem has been obvious for years, and has steadily worsened as
the price of get-tough mandatory sentencing laws enacted in years past
has swollen to obscene proportions. The corrections bill now exceeds
$1 billion a year, in a state that has been forced to cut deeply into
education and social services budgets because of the Great Recession.

But year in and year out, political anxieties about being labeled
"soft on crime" have kept lawmakers in a state of fiscal and political
denial.

Denial is possible no longer. "This is an issue whose time has come,"
said Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, "and it's frankly overdue."

Overdue, but on the agenda at last. All three branches of government
and both major parties are poised to participate in an overhaul of
sentencing laws, in an effort to lower corrections costs, ease jail
and prison crowding and offer rehabilitative alternatives for drug
addicts and other non-violent offenders.

One of the leaders in this effort, along with the governor, has been
state Supreme Court Chief Justice Carol Hunstein. "You frankly cannot
build enough prisons and you cannot run out of criminals," Hunstein
told a judicial seminar a few weeks ago. "The prison system is costing
huge sums of money and is not necessarily keeping the population safer."

Under a proposal adopted by the Georgia House Judiciary Non-Civil
Committee, an 11-member council appointed by Deal, Hunstein, the
lieutenant governor and House speaker will study the state's criminal
laws and make recommendations. Then a joint House-Senate bipartisan
committee will draft alternative sentencing legislation.

Georgians have paid a prohibitive price for get-tough politics. Now
it's time to get real.